Expectations in giving and receiving help among nurses and Russian refugees

Stimulated by the emergence of a new refugee group that is unknown and vulnerable to misunderstanding by health care providers, and the exigency in nursing to understand potential variance in nurse and client assumptions about helping, this paper reports exploratory research comparing helping orientations of Russian Protestant Pentecostal refugees (N = 28) with professional nurses (N = 32) in the United States. Findings based on the Brickman et al. (1982) theory of helping, which addresses attribution of responsibility in helping interactions, indicated differences among the nurse and Russian orientations. Contrasting with the nurses' primary selection of the moral orientation, which assumes high individual responsibility for the causes and solutions of problems, the Russian refugee group's first selection was the medical orientation, which assumes low individual responsibility for the causes and solutions of problems. The two groups' differing orientations are considered in the context of nurse-client interactions and divergent cultural values bearing on assumptions of individual responsibility.